Toll roads fail because after they are paid off, the tax remains. Imagine after your last house paymemt, you still gots bills.
Scam.
Additional number of highway lanes fail because it creates incentive to build tall apartment buildings, clogging the new highway. Now instead of 4 clogged lanes you have 8.
Monopoly, you cannot win. The Government club, you ain’t in it.
Toll roads are a scam whether in private or public sector hands. The Mass Turnpike was supposed to be paid off decades ago. Now that two terms of the liberal Democrat Gov. Malloy has brought CT to its knees they are talking about bringing tolls back to route 95, which is also a critical local road for poor working stiffs.
If one looks at public transportation investment as a way of paying other people to ride a train or bus so that I can drive my car in less traffic, it becomes more palatable, to me at least.
There's a phenomenon known to highway planners (and economists) as "induced demand," also known as "if you build it they will come." Add capacity and more drivers will use it, wiping out any gains. Or to use another phrase of road planners, "Curing traffic by adding capacity is like curing obesity by loosening your belt." In Los Angeles, they spent 1.6 billion dollars to widen the 405. When it was done, average commute times were exactly the same. There were just more cars making the slow crawl.
Good article from Wired about induced demand here: What’s Up With That: Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse